


Handholds

by Westgate (Harkpad)



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-09 23:53:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8918509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harkpad/pseuds/Westgate
Summary: Clint falls off a cliff. The journey back to the top and to safety isn't easy, but Phil's waiting at the top. It's enough.





	

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr peeps voted for Hurt/Comfort - this is pretty light on that, but it's there. Kinda went a different direction once Clint fell off a cliff, though. Thanks for reading!

“Clint?”

It was Phil’s voice, but Clint still couldn’t breathe properly. He tried again, but his chest felt like it was full of broken glass, and the air up here was brittle.

“Clint, I can’t get to you, but I can see you. I need you to talk to me, come on. Clint!”

Clint sucked in a hard breath and a little more air got to his lungs this time. The smell of the rocks and dirt actually seemed to help, and the next breath he took was a little easier. 

“Clint!”

The air was thin, and once Clint got his breathing under control, the cold shook through his tac suit and he shivered violently against the rocky cliff face. He took a deep breath, and his ribs ached, but he was alive after tumbling over the edge of a cliff. “Phil,” he tried to call, but his voice was brittle as the cold air. He tried again. This time he cupped his hand over his ear to block the wind. “Phil!” He said.

This time the comms picked up. “Jesus, Clint, you went over the edge and . . . Sit rep. Now.”

Clint looked around and tried not to let vertigo win. “This is a small, fucking ledge, Phil,” he said, and pressed his back against the rock wall behind him. “I’m not sure how I stayed on this, really. Looks like I should've gone right over.” A sharp spiking pain in his ankle reminded him of the landing he’d stuck about as well as a house poodle might have. Embarrassing. He craned his head very carefully, and looked up.

“You’re too far down for me to just reach,” Phil said, and Clint could see him looking over the cliff, his mouth turned down in a frown.

The sight of him sent a surge of relief through Clint’s chest, and he blew out another deep breath. Phil could see him. Phil would help him, like he always did. Clint ignored the whispers in his memory about help and weakness.

Weakness or no, he counted on Phil’s determination to help bring Clint home every mission. He’d even begun rewarding Phil for his rescues on a daily basis.

A year ago they leased their first apartment together. Clint cooked, home-style cooking learned by a life on his own with memories of traveling circus meals cooked over a fire and with tiny camp stoves. Phil did the laundry, a chore Clint never got the hang of himself, while Clint organized the bookshelves and kept the bills in easy-to-deal-with piles on the counter. Phil made sure to water the plants.

They had a system for everything but it depended on both of them coming home safe at night. Coming home safe at night was something Clint figured he’d never be able to do on his own anymore, not in SHIELD and not with the kind of work they had him doing. He may have been fine going solo for the ten years or so between the circus and SHIELD, but he’d gotten banged around, gotten lost, and had been lucky to be found again.

Some nights he sat up wondering what he’d do if it all came crashing down and he lost the support he’d gotten used to.

“I have a rope in my suit,” he called, and reached for the third pocket down on his left leg. “These pants are the best,” he added, and then, as he pulled the rope out, the ledge he was sitting on shifted beneath him, and the part holding his feet crumbled away with a deep rumble. The breath left Clint’s lungs and he threw his hands out wide and pressed his butt against the face of the cliff. His feet ended up dangled over the new ledge, and he felt the wind kick up like it was threatening to blow him away, into the misty canyon below.

“Clint!” Phil screamed, and Clint wanted to answer him, reassure him, but he was busy making sure he didn’t fall to his death. His ankle exploded in knife-piercing pain as he tried to get his feet under him on what was left of the ledge, and even though he’d spent endless chunks of his life in high spots, the mist swirling and obscuring any sense of the bottom of the canyon was giving him vertigo.

He ended up with the rope in one hand and a fistful of sharp rock in the other. He looked side to side. Getting enough leverage to throw his rope up to Phil was out of the question now. “I have to climb up!” he called. “This ledge isn’t stable. Do you have a rope?”

Phil was quiet for a moment, and then his voice crackled over the comms. Clint could hear the wind whistling around the microphone. “No. That’s one thing I don’t have.” After Clint had time to shift his weight just enough to get a better look at the cliff wall above him, Phil came back on the line. “I can’t raise the evac team. The weather must be getting in the way. I’m not sure a ‘copter could get to you anyway with that fog.”

Clint closed his eyes. Phil didn’t have anything. They’d had to abandon their camp when something gave them away to the HYDRA base they were there to observe. It was just supposed to be a recon mission and it had ended in a chase through the woods and a fistfight that ended with Clint hurling a guy off the cliff but falling after him as the ground gave way at the edge. He’d tumbled right onto the ledge he was on now, with his ankle on fire and a chasm floor at least two hundred feet below him.

“Clint, I don’t have anything,” Phil said. His voice was dark with rage, and Clint had to close his eyes against the sudden realization that Phil was angry because he was helpless. Clint took the rage in Phil’s voice and pushed inside himself. He could use it.

“I think my ankle’s broken,” He answered. “But I’ve climbed tougher walls and you’re ready to pull me up, right?”

“Always,” Phil said. “I think you’ve got about twenty feet before I can get to you.”

Twenty feet. He took a few deep breaths and closed his eyes for a moment.

He pictured a warm apartment filled with books and plants and music and coffee. He pictured Phil’s office at SHIELD, with its plush, fading navy blue couch. He pictured splitting takeout across a conference room table with Jasper, Maria, Phil, and Nick on nights they all had to work late. He pictured lazy Saturday mornings in Phil’s bed, the soft, yellow sheets highlighting Phil’s sparkling blue eyes as Clint woke up to a smile and soft kiss.

He took another deep breath, opened his eyes, and turned on his good foot, drawing on years of being light on his feet. He wrapped the rope around his shoulders in case he could find a good spot where he could toss it to Phil, and reached for a handhold. His hands were already scraped raw from his fall, but he ignored the burning and held on tight.

He was climbing alone, and Phil could only watch above him, but he was leaning over the cliff, and Clint checked in with him each time he found a stable hold. His eyes were filled with a steely determination, and Clint used that to fuel his own.

“You’ve got this,” Phil said.

Clint moved slow, testing his grip before committing, and pausing when the wind whipped too hard against his face. He made steady progress, but after he moved his good foot for the fifth time, his luck shook. He was reaching for a handhold when the rock he was standing on gave way. He threw his feet against the cliff wall without thinking, and as he managed to find a good handhold and stop his fall, his lower leg exploded in fiery pain.

He groaned as he pulled his good leg onto a spot that might hold him, and Phil called out at the same time. The world faded away, though, leaving only dusty grey rock in front of his face, pressing against his cold cheek, and his arm muscles pulsing with tension, holding his body up in desperation.

“Clint, you’re okay. Clint,” Phil said over the comms.

Clint latched onto his voice. He was _going_ to feel Phil’s hand clasped in his at the top, dammit.

He sucked the thin, icy mountain air into his aching lungs and tried to focus on something other than pain.

“Just ten more feet, Clint,” Phil said, and Clint managed to open his eyes and look up. Phil looked so far away, unable to do anything but pour confidence into his voice. It would have to be enough.

“Okay,” Clint whispered. ”Okay,” he repeated, a little stronger this time. The pain in his ankle was fading to a throb, and he focused on finding another handhold. Ten more feet. His hands were bleeding now, the blood running in tiny rivulets over his wrists, but he found holds. He walled off the sheering pain in his ankle and gritted his teeth against the way it felt like his foot might fall off any moment. His vision greyed at the edges the closer he got to Phil, and Phil’s voice shook as he tried to reassure Clint with every inch.

The world narrowed to his hands and good foot against a jagged cliff wall, and even Phil’s voice blended in with the wind as Clint worked his way up. The blood from his hands got thicker and the wind fought to wrench Clint from the mountainside, and it was as if the wind was cutting Clint’s skin in a trick to pry him off the cliff.

He kept climbing. He was going to get to go home. He was going to get more than a taste of a good life, and the wind and the cliff and his ankle could fuck right off if they thought they’d drag Clint to his death here, with Phil watching from the solid ground above.

He couldn’t look up anymore. He just found a handhold and pulled himself up, found another hold and pulled himself up. He found another hold and pulled himself up. His shirt sleeves were soaked in blood and he could hear himself breathing, and it sounded like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together. He kept climbing.

Suddenly, strong hands gripped his wrists and Clint pushed with his good foot and he was over the edge, rolling onto his back. He couldn’t help groaning as his muscles unclenched for the first time in thirty minutes.

“Clint,” Phil said, and fuck if it didn’t sound like a prayer as he leaned over Clint and pressed his warm, rough hands to Clint’s cheeks. Clint couldn’t help reaching up and pressing them closer with his own hands.

“Shit,” Phil muttered as Clint’s bloody hands covered his. “You’re a mess.”

Clint opened his eyes and sat up, leaning heavily into Phil. “I’ll be okay,” he said, and his head dropped onto Phil’s shoulder.

Phil pulled him close. “I know. But we need to get out of here and to higher ground where we can get a signal to the extraction team. Ok? We need to go. I need to get you help.” He pulled Clint to his feet and threw his shoulder under Clint’s arm.

Clint tried to walk without putting too much weight on Phil, tried to limp and stay upright on his own, but he was so tired. His body felt like it was checking out on him no matter what he wanted, but he fought it. His hands felt raw and were still bleeding, despite the gauze Phil had wrapped around them. His foot and ankle were burning and throbbing at the same time, and each step added a sharp spike of pain. But he limped up the side of the hill alongside Phil, who was trying to get them out of here and back to base.

They stopped when they reached the top of the hill, and Phil laid Clint down gently, pulled his leg out and propped it up with a nearby rock. Clint couldn’t help short panting breaths around the pain, and Phil brushed his cheek gently and said, “Give me two minutes.” He paused, and he must have seen something in how Clint looked because he added, “Stay awake, Clint.”

Clint would do that for Phil. He’d stay awake. He wouldn’t pass out.  He’d try. He stared up at the sky as his leg throbbed in time with his heart. The white clouds puffed along, giving the blue sky a beauty and perspective that Clint hadn’t seen when he was pinned to the wall of the cliff.

Clint blinked up at Phil when he came back and sat down next to him. “Help’s coming?” he asked, and he was hoarse from the cold air of the cliff and the yelling he’d done while he clawed his way up to Phil.

Phil ran his hand through Clint’s hair, warm and gentle, and nodded. “Ten minutes out, is all. You’ll be on crutches in no time,” he said with a grin.

Clint just nodded. Crutches didn’t do the walking for you, didn’t get you where you needed to be, but they propped you up, took some of the weight when you needed it, and Clint was finally to the point in his life where he could admit that sometimes? Sometimes he needed that.

So Clint let Phil keep him awake until help arrived, and later, hours and hours later when Clint had sunk into the cushions of their couch at home and Phil handed him a glass of juice and another pain pill, Phil said, “You were amazing on that cliff, Clint. You pulled yourself up and got yourself out and all I could do was just watch you save yourself.”

Clint pulled Phil in for a kiss and ran his fingers through Phil’s hair and pressed his forehead to Phil’s. “You’re never just watching,” he replied. “Even if you think you are.”


End file.
